Tee hee! Sarah at The Delicious Life had me crying with laughter at her
Sugar
High Friday announcement - is SHF the new EotMEoTE?! I am indeed
just the right age to remember when knowing all the words to Ice, Ice
Baby was THE way to be the coolest kid in the playground. Which I never
was... so this entry is entirely straight. For the 'ice' themed SHF, I
made Frangelico ice cream, which came out slightly chewy (a recurring
theme with my hand-churned ice cream, clearly I need to invest in a
machine) but utterly delicious in a sweet, boozy, hen-night cocktail
way. You know Frangelico, don't you? It's an Italian hazelnut liqueur -
the one that comes in the cute monk-shaped bottle with the little rope
girdle round its 'waist'. I sandwiched it with a few raspberries between
some very high-cocoa chocolate meringue discs and would recommend the
combination, especially if it is less humid where you are: obviously
meringue is not going to stay crisp for long when covered in ice cream,
but these never stood a chance. They were wonderfully bitter and intense
against the sweet ice cream, though. A very grown-up dessert.

parcels from other food bloggers, courtesy of Euro Blogging By Post:
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...and 340 entries!

Pertelote may not have changed my life in any dramatic way, but it has
brought me friends and opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have had, and
which make it all worthwhile even when it seems impossible that I'll
ever think of anything worth writing again. I don't pretend it can
compete with the amazingly professional blogs that have sprung up in the
last four years, but I think it has achieved what I wanted it too - not
that I can describe what that is now any better than I could in 2002.
It's a chronicle, a resource, an outlet and an occupation: hence my
continued insistence on handcoding, which I know seems eccentric to most
readers - especially since it is the reason for the continued absence of
a comments facility, the one factor that is nowadays the most likely to
prompt the remark 'call that a blog?' (four years ago, non-news blogs
were just about acceptable, but daily links were sine qua non.
Two years ago, photos.) Maybe I'll crack in the next four years...

We're not usually a ready-meal sort of a household, but once in a while
everyone deserves a lazy day. Besides, these are not your average ready
meals: Bighams don't have a lot
to say (I'd gladly read more about their suppliers) but they're clearly
ticking all the boxes: good, fresh ingredients, carefully made to
interesting recipes - a small company worth supporting. We started by
nibbling on some crayfish filo parcels - delicious filling even if the
crayfish was padded out with cod, it wasn't overpowered by the chilli
sauce as it might have been. Then from their 'summer sizzlers' range,
'peppered beef hachés' - burgers to you and me - stuffed with
roquefort and spinach. These shrivelled from their beautiful raw state
under the grill, but the cheese kept them moist, and the beef was very
tasty. Now, these products have to be cooked, so perhaps to the diehard
fan of *ping* cuisine they wouldn't really qualify as _ready_ meals, but
as we don't have a microwave they're the closest we're going to get.
Certainly they're as easy as you could wish for (in general: the
crayfish parcels did ask to be 'brushed with olive oil', which is - in
terms of equipment if not skills - presumably beyond the truly
kitchen-challenged). They're either very reasonably priced or a wee bit
expensive, depending whether you compare them to an upmarket takeaway
(yes, in London such things do indeed exist) or to a bog-standard
microwavable. There really is enough care in their preparation to dispel
the 'I could make that myself for a fraction of the cost' argument. Of
course you could, but just for tonight, you're not going to.

Take the dough and roll/push it out into a rectangle. Spread the red
pepper purée over it, and scatter other ingredients. Basil would
be nice, too. Roll dough up like a swiss roll (roll from long edge).
Slice into nine equal parts. Arrange slices in a cake tin, one in the
middle and the rest squodged around it like chelsea buns. Glaze with
egg or milk. Allow to prove for around half an hour until increased
in size (recipes normally say doubles, but it just won't. Half an
hour in a warm place will be fine.) Bake for about thirty minutes until
crusty.